The Time Paradox (Artemis Fowl 6)

Angeline Fowl was splayed on the bed, as though thrown there. Her head was angled back so sharply that the line from her neck to her chin was almost straight, and her skin was pale enough to seem translucent.

She’s not breathing, thought Artemis, panic fluttering in his chest like a caged bird. I was wrong. I am too late.

Then his mother’s entire frame convulsed as she dragged down a painful breath.

Artemis’s resolve almost left him. His legs were boneless rubber and his forehead burned.

This is my mother. How can I do what needs to be done?

But he would do it. There wasn’t anyone else who could.

Artemis reached his mother’s side and gently pushed strands of hair back from her face.

“I am here, Mother. Everything will be fine. I found a cure.”

Somehow, Angeline Fowl heard her son’s words, and her eyes flickered open. Even her irises had lost their color, fading to the ice blue of a winter lake.

“Cure,” she sighed. “My little Arty found the cure.”

“That’s right,” said Artemis. “Little Arty found the cure. It was the lemur. Remember, the Madagascan lemur from Rathdown Park?”

Angeline raised a bone-thin finger, tickling the air before Jayjay’s nose. “Little lemur. Cure.”

Jayjay, unsettled by the bedridden woman’s skeletal appearance, ducked behind Artemis’s head.

“Nice lemur,” said Angeline, a weak smile twitching her lips.

I am the parent now, thought Artemis. She is the child.

“Can I hold him?”

Artemis took a half-step back. “No, Mother. Not yet. Jayjay is a very important creature. This little fellow could save the world.”

Angeline spoke through her teeth. “Let me hold him. Just for a moment.”

Jayjay crawled down the back of Artemis’s jacket, as though he understood the request and did not want to be held.

“Please, Arty. It would comfort me to hold him.”

Artemis nearly handed the lemur over. Nearly.

“Holding him will not cure you, Mother. I need to inject some fluid into one of your veins.”

Angeline seemed to be regaining her strength. She inched backward, sliding her head up the headboard. “Don’t you want to make me happy, Arty?”

“I prefer healthy to happy for the moment,” said Artemis, making no move to hand over the lemur.

“Don’t you love me, son?” crooned Angeline. “Don’t you love your mommy?”

Artemis moved briskly, tearing open the medi-kit and closing his fingers around the transfusion gun, a single tear rolling down his pale cheek.

“I love you, Mother. I love you more than life. If you could only know what I have been through to find little Jayjay. Just be still for five seconds, then this nightmare will be over.”

Angeline’s eyes were crafty slits. “I don’t want you to inject me, Artemis. You’re not a trained nurse. Wasn’t there a doctor here, or was I dreaming that?”

Artemis primed the gun, waiting for the charge light to flash green. “I have administered shots before, Mother. I gave you your medicine more than once the last time you were . . . ill.”

“Artemis!” snapped Angeline, the flat of her hand slapping the sheet. “I demand that you give the lemur to me now! This instant! And summon the doctor.”

Artemis plucked a vial from the medi-kit. “You are hysterical, Mother. Not yourself. I think I should give you a sedative before I administer the antidote.” He slid the vial into the gun and reached for his mother’s arm.

“No,” Angeline virtually screeched, slapping him away with surprising strength. “Don’t touch me with your LEP sedatives, you stupid boy.”

Artemis froze.“LEP, Mother? What do you know of the LEP?”

Angeline tugged her lip, a guilty child. “What? Did I say LEP? Three letters, no more. They mean nothing to me.”

Artemis took another step away from the bed, gathering Jayjay protectively in his arms.

“Tell me the truth, Mother. What is happening here?”

Angeline abandoned her innocent act, pounding the mattress with delicate fists and squealing in frustration.

“I despise you, Artemis Fowl. You bothersome human. How I loathe you.”

Not words one expects to hear from one’s mother.

Angeline lay flat on the bed, steaming with rage. Literally steaming. Her eyeballs rolled in their sockets, and tendons stood out like steel cables on her arms and neck. All the time she ranted.

“When I have the lemur I will crush you all. The LEP, Foaly, Julius Root, all of you. I will send laser dogs down every tunnel in the earth’s crust until I flush out that odious dwarf. And as for that female captain, I will brainwash her and make her my slave.” She cast a hateful look at Artemis. “Fitting revenge, don’t you agree, my son.” The last two words dripped from her lips like poison from a viper’s fangs.

Artemis held Jayjay close; he could feel the small creature shivering against his chest. Or perhaps the shivering was his own.

“Opal,” he said. “You followed us home.”

“Finally!” shouted Artemis’s mother, in Opal’s voice. “The great boy genius sees the truth.” Angeline’s limbs stiffened, and she levitated from the bed, surrounded by a roiling mist of steam. Her pale blue eyes cut through the fog, spearing Artemis with their mad glare.

“Did you think you could win? Did you believe that the battle was won? How charmingly deluded. You do not even possess magic. I, on the other hand, have more magic than any other fairy since the demon warlocks. And once I have the lemur, I will be immortal.”

Artemis rolled his eyes. “Don’t forget invincible.”

“I haaate you!” squealed Opal/Angeline. “When I have the lemur, I will ... I will ...”

“Kill me in some horrible fashion,” suggested Artemis.

“Precisely. Thank you.”

Angeline’s body pivoted stiffly until she hovered upright, her halo of charged hair brushing the ceiling.

“Now,” she said, pointing a skeletal finger at the cowering Jayjay, “give me that creature.”

Artemis wrapped the lemur in his jacket. “Come and get him,” he said.

In the study, Holly was running through Artemis’s theory.

“That’s it?” said No1 when Holly had finished explaining. “You’re not forgetting some crucial detail? Like the part that makes sense?”

“The whole thing is ridiculous.” interjected Foaly from the monitors. “Come on, fairies. We’ve done our part. Time to head belowground.”

“Soon,” said Holly. “Let’s just give Artemis five minutes to check it out. All we need to do is be alert.”

Foaly’s sigh

crackled through the speakers. “Well, at least let me raise the shuttle. The troops are holding at Tara, waiting for a callback.”

Holly thought about this. “That’s good. You do that. Whatever happens, we need to be ready to move out. And when you’re finished, do a sweep of the estate, see where that nurse is.”

Foaly’s focus shifted left, while he put a call in to Tara.

Holly pointed at No1. “You just have a little of that signature magic dancing on your fingertips in case we need it. I won’t feel completely safe until Angeline is well, and we’re drinking sim-coffee in a Haven bar.”

No1 raised his hands, and soon they were enveloped in ripples of red power. “No problem, Holly. I’m ready for anything.”

It was a statement that was missing an almost.

In the same split second, the monitors blacked out and the door burst open with a force that actually drove the doorknob into the wall. Butler’s huge frame filled the gap.

Holly’s smile slipped when she noticed the pistol in the bodyguard’s fist and the mirrored sunglasses covering his eyes.

He’s armed and doesn’t want to be mesmerized.

Holly was quick, but Butler was quicker, and he had the element of surprise; after all, he was supposed to be on his way to China. Holly went for her gun, but Butler was there before her, ripping the Neutrino from her hip.

We have other tricks, thought Holly. We have magic. No1 will knock your socks off.

Butler dragged something into the room on a trolley. A steel barrel with runes etched on the metal.

What’s this? What’s he doing?

No1 managed to get off a single bolt; indoor lightning that scorched Butler’s shirt, knocking him back a pace. But even as he stumbled backward, the bodyguard swung the trolley past him, slingshotting it into the room. A thick slime slopped from its open mouth, splashing on No1’s legs. The barrel trundled forward, knocking Holly and No1 aside like skittles.

No1 stared at his fingers as the magic on each tip winked out like candles in a breeze.

“I don’t feel so great,” he groaned, then keeled over, eyes flickering, lips muttering ancient spells that did not one iota of good.

What is in that barrel? wondered Holly, releasing her suit’s wings from their sheath. Butler grabbed Holly’s ankle as she ascended, flipping her ignominiously into the barrel. She felt the thick gunk close over her like a wet fist, blocking her nose and filling her throat.